International Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Students (S&T Committee Report)

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. He speaks with great experience about these matters, as we have just heard. He has chaired the Science and Technology Committee for some time. I was very privileged to serve with him and to succeed him. We are enormously grateful for the way he introduced this report. I was particularly taken by the case histories he mentioned from Jesus College. I cannot, alas, from my own background quote such specific examples but I am absolutely certain that it is only when we get to the detail of some of these astonishing cases that we realise that at the moment we seem to muddle our way into making life difficult for the very students we wish to attract. Before I start my main observations, perhaps I may say also how much I am looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull.

There are two government policies that are both perfectly worthy but are proving difficult to reconcile. The first is to increase numbers of international students and the second is to deal with the historic abuses which certainly happened in the international student visa system. If we are to deliver what the Budget set out yesterday, which is a competitive economy, we simply must attract students to our world-class universities in competition with other world-class universities in competing economies. That, I am certain, is universally accepted. We have to look at how successful we are in that, the first and most important of the Government’s policies. We know that our economy’s success in creating employment will depend on an industrial strategy of building on existing strengths. For example, I could mention healthcare, aerospace, biotechnology, renewable energy, the automotive sector and many more. They are often multidisciplinary, with an interaction between chemistry, biology, medicine, engineering and much else. We will need to attract inward investment, which will come when those who have the inclination to invest are persuaded that the quality of the science and engineering is the highest, and that a reservoir of skilled persons is available to drive that knowledge economy.

We have a skills shortage. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned the figures issued by the CBI. Employers throughout the country are struggling to meet demand, particularly for engineers, but for other skilled graduates in the science and technology sectors. The number of UK-based engineering students over the past 10 years has risen a little, but very disappointingly, from 12,700 in 2004 to 13,700—an increase of 1,000 over four years. The number of non-EU international engineering students increased by much more, by about 70% from 3,200 to 5,500. The Institution of Engineering and Technology estimates that to meet demand from employers we need 87,000 new engineers per year. Even if the Government do not accept that figure—which I accept may be special pleading—I think we all recognise just how dire the shortage can be in those specialist skills areas. Sir James Dyson, who has advised the Conservative Party on these matters, recently stated in an article in the Guardian:

“But I do worry about Britain’s ability to make, make, make. Make engineering breakthroughs. Make scientific progress. And, yes, make money for UK plc”.

I think that sums up what an awful lot of captains of industry would say and the evidence that the committee heard. We need to attract more of our UK students into STEM subjects, we need to attract more international STEM students and we need to attract more highly qualified scientists and engineers, even if they have not done their research training and graduate or postgraduate studies here, to make up our numbers.

That brings me to the second government policy, which is proving incompatible with the first: the policy of tightening procedures and qualifications for student visas. We have heard about the added complexity, cost and bureaucracy and the perception, particularly in India and Pakistan, that once you have graduated you are no longer welcome. Some pretty lurid headlines in the Indian papers said just that. I give credit to the Prime Minister, to David Willetts, and to other Ministers who had the thankless job of trying to reverse that perception but, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, once the perception gains currency it takes an awful lot of hard work to reverse it.

We must acknowledge that there has been historic abuse of student visas by some institutions that I would call marginal. In the past, there has been a danger of international graduates, once they finished their studies and decided to stay in this country, taking jobs for which they were overqualified—unskilled jobs—therefore increasing the competition for jobs for our nationals. These issues need addressing. Clearly, you need to make sure that, having trained people for skilled jobs, they take on the skilled jobs. It is important that we do not allow such abuses, but we must not try to deal with these problems at the expense of jeopardising that overriding national need to equip ourselves with a competitive knowledge economy.

The Government said in response to our committee’s report:

“There have been a number of myths and inaccurate perceptions, which we are determined to correct, in partnership with the sector who also have an important role to play in this”.

I hope my noble friend the Minister will concede that the well documented examples in the report of added costs and complexity which have fallen on students, the higher education sector and employers amount to more than myths and inaccurate perceptions, although there are indeed those as well. The abuses certainly needed tackling but, equally, genuine students deserved a better visa service than they were receiving in some of the instances on which we took evidence. I acknowledge that since our report there have been some improvements, although it will take years for some of these perceptions, however ill founded, to be redressed.

An example of the complexity which the Government have imposed on the system is the tier 5 route, for people who want to come to the United Kingdom for a short period to do work experience, training, research or a fellowship through an approved, government-authorised exchange scheme. As paragraph 106 of our report said:

“The University of Manchester described the Tier 5 route as ‘unpopular with both our students and employers … We are not familiar with any students actually taking a Tier 5 experience at Manchester’”.

If the Home Office really sought to work in partnership with universities to implement a reformed student visa regime—as the Government’s response suggested and as I am sure it does—it would surely have been much more productive to have worked closely with the sector in designing measures which were effective, fit for purpose, less complex and, above all, did not need changing rapidly and repeatedly at short notice. It would also have been desirable, if possible, to have a scheme which would be less expensive for students.

The Government remain determined to cling to a net migration target that includes students as its largest component. They plead the need to comply with UN regulations. The United States also includes students in its overall migration figures and then excludes them for migration policy purposes. This would also have been the sensible way for us to proceed. As international student numbers grow, the United States has no inducement to limit their share of this expanding market. While we insist on including students in the national migration targets, we will be conflicted and remain so until international student numbers level off or decline. The huge public benefit derived from international students coming to Britain will be compromised.